Staten Island quintuplets are doing well in hospital

Staten Island Advance/Bill LyonsKevin Ferrante holds a photo of he and his wife Jamie in front of his Grant City home. The couple are the parents of quintuplets born on Saturday.

Four of the quintuplets born to a Grant City couple desperate to have children are now on respirators, but officials at Staten Island University Hospital say that all five babies were born healthy and are doing well.

Jamie Ferrante, 31, gave birth to four daughters and one son early Saturday morning, none of whom weighed more than three pounds. The children were born at 27 weeks, or more than two months premature, a family member said.

The smallest, 1 pound, 8-ounce Amanda Frances, was immediately placed on a respirator but has since been removed from it. Her four siblings are now on respirators and all five are recovering at the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.

"They were born at a healthy weight for the risky birth that it was," said a SIUH spokesman, Christian Preston. "They (doctors) were comfortable with it."

The post-Christmas miracle that has grabbed headlines around the country almost wasn't. Leading up to birth many doctors tried to persuade them to undergo a "reduction" -- or the abortion of one or more fetuses -- so as to reduce the risk to the others.

"I knew I couldn't go to my deathbed knowing I did something like that, and neither could she," said new father Kevin Ferrante, 34, a native of New Dorp. "We figured we'd put it in God's hands, and so far so good. It's one day at a time."

Mrs. Ferrante and her husband had been trying to have children for more than three years, and she had been receiving fertility treatments for about a year and a half, said her brother Danny Scherillo. Mrs. Ferrante, a Moore Catholic High School grad, and her husband Kevin, an operating engineer, have been married for a little more than four years.

The parents have not yet been able to hold their five new additions, but have been able to touch them.

"It was great," said Kevin Ferrante.

The children were born by Caesarean section at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, and all five were out in six minutes.